Senate Approves Bills to ‘Make Permanent’ Ban on Reproductive Cloning, Allow Embryonic Stem Cell Research
In a "virtually party-line" 22-5 vote, the Senate yesterday passed a bill (SB 1230) that would "make permanent" the state's five-year moratorium on human reproductive cloning, set to expire Jan. 1, the Los Angeles Times reports. Senate Republicans who opposed the bill, sponsored by Sen. Dede Alpert (D-San Diego), said that the legislation would not ban therapeutic cloning for medical research. "It's not a cloning ban at all," Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside) said, adding, "The bill says some cloning is banned and some is not. ... In order to do the (medical) research, you've got to kill a fetus." Haynes proposed an amendment to the bill that would have prohibited "any form of cloning for any purpose," but the Senate defeated the measure 20-12. The Senate yesterday also voted 21-10 to approve a bill (SB 1272) that would allow embryonic stem cell research. Neither bill passed yesterday would affect the practice of cloning human embryos for use in medical research. The bills move to the Assembly for approval (Ingram, Los Angeles Times, 5/3).
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